Since both Shohei Ohtani and Drew Rasmussen got an internal brace in their elbow instead of the full Tommy John surgery, I decided to see how other pitchers who got the brace performed … and the study didn’t take long. With fewer than a dozen samples, there is no study.

Using Jon Roegele’s Tommy John surgery database, the following five major league pitchers got the surgery and returned to the majors. The surgery failed with Matt Bush and he eventually needed a full Tommy John surgery.

Again, with a sample size of just five, I’m not going to draw zero conclusions from the list.

Additionally, these four guys got the brace and never returned to the majors.

No analysis from me but the information is here if anyone wants to break out their Jump-to-Conclusions mat.

Tommy John surgery week continues with the hitter edition. With both Riley Greene and Jasson Domínguez (Shohei Ohtani got the brace procedure) getting a Tommy John surgery, I wanted to know how their performance changed from when they were healthy, to hurt, to fixed.

Note: I’m pushing my limits on what I’d like with a sample was 26 hitters. Sometime the matched seasons doesn’t lineup thereby pushing the number even further down. I understand if someone feels the sample is too small and blows off the results.

I found the change by using a weighted change from season to season. The hitters who had the most matched plate appearance got the most weight. Read the rest of this entry »

With the season over, it’s to find out how hitters performed who didn’t let an injury heal and played through the pain. Whether these hitters cause permanent damage to their bodies or pick up bad habits, they continue to underperform their projections. Besides collecting the names myself, I’ve asked for some help (article and Twitter) for this past season’s list.

I first determined the decline in an article covering 2017 to 2019 and have continued collecting names and results (2020, 2021, and 2022). Read the rest of this entry »

For the last half dozen or so seasons I’ve attempted to collect the hitters who have played through an injury this season. These banged-up guys underperformed their projection by ~20 points of OPS the next season. That works out to a 5% drop in production. What I need is help trying to collect all the possible batters while this season is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Here are the names I have so far: Read the rest of this entry »

Not everyone can be in the middle of a playoff race as the regular season winds down. Indeed, if you’re in a head-to-head league, three-quarters of the teams are now just watching the final four teams battle for a championship. If you’re just playing out the string in an Ottoneu league, you’ve still got an opportunity to trawl the available free agents for potential keepers for next season.

The obvious place to start would be looking for injured players who are out for the season but are on a timetable to return healthy next year. And because of the roster rules in Ottoneu, you can grab players on the 60-day IL and add them to your roster without using up a valuable roster spot. Note: some leagues have rules about getting your roster down to a legal 40 players during the offseason to prevent players from hoarding injured players. But even if you need to cut from the fringe of your roster to keep those injured players, some can be worth it.

The trick to stashing injured players is finding the right ones at the right price. It wouldn’t be a wise use of resources to roster a player at his full value, especially considering the risk present with some of these guys. The goal is to roster one of these guys below their market value so that they’re not a burden on your salary cap after the offseason salary increase and any potential arbitration raises. Depending on your league context and the status of your roster, I could see the argument for keeping one of these stashes at a higher price. Heading into the offseason with them on your roster gives you the option to keep them, trade them, or just cut them at the cut deadline.

What I wouldn’t recommend would be to try and keep pitchers who are slated to miss all of next season. That means guys like Jacob deGrom, Shane McClanahan, or Liam Hendriks. The primary reason is that they’ll get hit with two rounds of salary increases before they’re contributing to your team again, so they need to be rostered at a salary well below market value to come close to being worth it. That could end up being a hefty amount of salary tied up in a pitcher with plenty of risk involved.

To help you identify where the line is between a worthwhile and a worthless stash, I’ve compiled a list of 22 potential stashes — 11 batters and 11 pitchers — with a range of projections next season. I’ve used the ZiPS 3 Year Projections to pull projected stats for 2024 and then used the Auction Calculator to build rough market values for those projected stats. Note: those long-term ZiPS projections haven’t been updated since the start of the season and ZiPS doesn’t have an exact playing time projection anyway; that’s going to have an affect on the projected points and values.

The big problem you’re going to run into with some of these really valuable players is that they’re already rostered in nearly every league. If you’ve got Vinnie Pasquantino or Oneil Cruz on your roster, you’re probably planning on keeping them no matter their injury status. What this table does tell us is that to really justify keeping one of these guys, their projection has to be really rosy (~.340 wOBA) or they need to be rostered at a really low salary. I’ve got Taylor Ward ($3) and Jarren Duran ($8) and Brendan Donovan ($5) rostered on one of my rebuilding teams and I’m thinking the latter two are going to end up being cut in January.

Because these 2024 projections were made at the beginning of the season, they’re not taking into consideration whatever performance occurred in this year, even if it was injury-marred. That’s why Jose Miranda rates so highly above. I do think he’s an interesting target to try and stash since he had such a promising start to his big league career and it seems like his shoulder injury sank his performance this year. I’d still be wary about taking that projection at face value, but he’s young enough that he could still have a step forward in him if he’s healthy.

Injured pitchers are even trickier to try and stash. Not only are their injuries usually more serious, it can take longer for them to return to their previous levels of performance, if they get there at all. Based on these projected values, there are just a handful of guys worth stashing, but that’s more an artifact of the playing time projection affecting the point totals. Nick Lodolo, Shane Baz, and Max Meyer all represent young pitchers who have had a taste of the big leagues who have low projected point totals above. Their per inning rates are solid enough that they could still be productive members of your roster should everything break in their favor.

The 2023 Draft Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Steve Cozzolino

The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI)

• Steve’s TGFBI Draft Board – Team 9
• Reuven’s TGFBI Draft Board – Team 8
• Ariel’s TGFBI Draft Board – Team 8
• General snake draft strategy
• KDS Strategy
• First five rounds strategy
• Saves strategy
• Steals strategy
• Catcher strategy
• Easiest draft decisions
• Toughest draft decisions

LABR Mixed Auction

• Ariel’s LABR Draft Board
• Altering strategy based on knowing how the other competitors draft
• General auction strategy for a 12 team mixed league
• Shohei Ohtani at $26 as Ariel’s most expensive player
• Saves strategy in a 12 team mixed league
• How to pull off obtaining so many value bargains in an auction

Read the rest of this entry »

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The 2023 Pre-Draft Injury episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Strategy Section

• Injury Overview / Ortho 101
• Injury reoccurrences
• World Baseball Classic injury concerns

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I tweeted out wanting to know who had shoulder surgeries similar to Fernando Tatis Jr. and it garnered many examples and opinions on the subject.

Hitters with a torn labrum in their shoulder (Tatis).

Jake Meyers ('21) – not back yet
Greg Bird ('16) – might have ended his career
Devin Mesoraco ('16)
Daric Barton ('11)
Posada ('08) – partial tear, back decent and then faded
Jesus Flores ('09) – career ender

Any others?

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) January 29, 2023

All I wanted was the names of those who had the same or similar operations but got a lot more. With those comps, I hoped to get a range of potential outcomes. Well, I got them and whole lot more.

I know most people will already be anchored to an opinion that is probably based on already drafting or passing on Tatis in drafts or rostering him or not in a keeper league. For those with an open mind, here is what I think is the best information people gave me. Read the rest of this entry »

So it is time for the annual article examing how hitters performed who didn’t let an injury heal and played through the pain. Whether these hitters cause permanent damage to their bodies or pick up bad habits, they continue to underperform their projections. Besides tallying the results, I have started collecting next year’s player list.

I first determined the decline in an article covering 2017 to 2019 and have continued collecting names and results (2020 and 2021). Read the rest of this entry »

Using Injured List spots is a key part of any fantasy league. Knowing who to stash, when to stash them, how long to wait can have a huge impact on your season. For Ottoneu leagues, like with MLB, the 10- and 15-day IL designations don’t impact roster construction. Those players count against your 40-man cap. The 60-day IL, however, does not count against your roster and that gives you an opportunity to carry more than 40 players at times.

As the season winds down, there is an opportunity to use that to improve your roster depth headed into the off-season.

Read the rest of this entry »